Sixteen Stories
by Amestris-Exile
Summary: And it isn't fate that took us all by storm; it's just the turn of a card. In-Progress; Ch. 1/3


Waugh. I love how school eats my life now. Between training, powerlifting, school, and Gaia, I'm gonna have gray hairs by the time I'm twenty, I swear to God.

I'm sorry I haven't updated in ages. Everything just keeps piling up. But as of now, I'm gonna try to have some form of new story or chapter every couple of weeks... spare my piece of shit Internet wants to cooperate. D:

**Fandom:** Xenosaga (Episode I)

**Pairing:** Nothing outright, but there is heavily implied AllenShion and chaosKOS-MOS.

**Spoilers:** Not in this one. This is totally AU, just because I can.

**Warnings:** A bit of violence, maybe a touch of sensuality. Very light by my standards. Rated Teen because I refuse to submit anything lower.

**Notes:** chaosKOS-MOS has officially taken its place in my heart as my One True Pairing. How I love it. :] I'm also sitting here trying to sing "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too!" by Say Anything with half a voice. It's actually sort of entertaining to listen to my voice crack like a twelve-year-old boy.

**Theme Song:** "Call It Karma" - Silverstein.

And it isn't fate that took us all by storm; it's just the turn of a card.

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. Sixteen . Stories .

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Is this what it's like to die? I couldn't help but wonder if this warm blanket I felt stretched across my being is the embrace of Death itself. They say that Death is a cold being, though, like the seraphims of Hell all broke out into one unified chorus in your chest. If this is true, and Death really did have me in its palm, then why did I feel so... cozy?

My thoughts were sluggish, thick and opaque like smog as they chugged along lazily in the tunnels of my brain. Where was I? How did I get here? What happened right before I came here? Nothing was making any sense. My memory was nothing but a laughable slur as I sifted through them, mere colors and whispers of voices arising from them but nothing that I could form into a legible thought. It was as if someone had injected my brain with some sort of tranquilizer that was just now taking effect; I felt like a druggie on the crest of his high.

There was nothing around me but darkness. Every which way I looked, darkness. It was so dark here I couldn't even see the hand I was trying desperately to focus on in front of my face. No weight held me here in this suspended state, the place where my feet were supposed to be feeling no solid ground beneath them. After a moment of hard straining a thought occurred to me, sending a ripple of fear through my spine.

If I really was dead, and this really was the realm of the spirits, I wouldn't have a hand. I would be just a hovering soul, a shell of the solid being I once was.

Terror tore through my brain, thoughts beginning to slowly solidify as I struggled with the impenetrable darkness that was my captor. I had to figure out what was going on right now, if I could ever hope to find out what happened to land me here in the first place.

Within moments I began to turn around, but stopped quite abruptly as I realized that I had no idea which way was up here in this realm of black. With nothing to visualize and no real sense of gravity, I could have been upside down and bent over backward for all I knew. Panic was beginning to settle into my chest, and if I were breathing I was sure I would be hyperventilating. I needed to get hold of something tangible, something to prove to my anarchy-riddled brain that I was really still here. I willed my "hands" to reach forward, groping blindly into the darkness before me. Of course, they found nothing to grasp.

Definitely not helping. With a terrified (albeit silent) gasp my hands darted back, retracting until my palms laid flat against something soft and warm. Wait. I was feeling something? My fingers grasped whatever laid underneath them with newfound fervor, feeling some sort of soft material that bunched and plied easily underneath my shaking hands. It was clothing, a shirt that was currently clutching at my chest. While another silent gasp of ecstasy tore through me my hands wandered upward, finding warm skin just above the top of the shirt.

A neck. Hair... my hair. Unpierced earlobes, just like mine had been. The sides of glasses. More hair. A round hairclip with a thick braid running through it. I was here. Or at least, I was physically here enough for my fingers to feel something. It was progress in the right direction, and I was gonna take it and run. Relief sank into my chaotic brain, bringing a bit of calm to the mass peril. I was here, in a sense. I wasn't absolutely gone from the earth, or whatever realm I was in right now. The point was that I wasn't completely dead.

The small reprieve from panic granted by my discovery allowed for a bit of clear thought, the cogs in my head beginning to slowly lurch their circular path. If I got here, there had to be a way to get out. And if not, there had to be a way to figure out exactly how I came to be here, which might lead to the way out. Any attempt I had made to figure out what happened right before I awoke here still brought nothing but smeared stains of color that served as memories. Great. My head was still drug-induced. Just what I needed. Even if I couldn't get my brain to work at this moment, I knew I had to eventually. How else was I going to make sense of the hole I found myself in?

I couldn't really tell if my eyes were closed but I made like I closed them anyway, warring with my convoluted head. I could beat this. I just had to focus… really, really focus. So I did. Managing to capture a particularly bright flash of color in one of the memories I held onto it like my life depended on it (for all I know, it might have), forcing detail into the image. Before long, and with much strained effort, details began to emerge among the bright splotch of orange and yellow; what seemed like a light tan line with two bright blue circles on each side at the top, a pale pink curve at the bottom. The orange began to divide into hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces, each sticking out every which way like each was trying to defy all the others. Hair. It was hair; vibrant, carrot-colored hair. The two brilliant tanzanite circles I'd seen earlier were taking on more color, turning into a more brilliant sapphire offset by an onyx circle in the dead center of each. They were eyes. The line between them was a nose, and the light pink was lips. This face… where did I recognize this face? Somewhere in the back of my head bells and whistles were going off like train sirens, trying desperately to kick a reaction out of me. After several minutes of constant struggling it clicked. If someone had been standing next to me they probably could have the synapse that finally fired to life somewhere between my ears.

It was Allen. Here I was, laying in the realm of death, and Allen's face was the first that came to mind.

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Dah dadaDAAAAAH. First fic in eight months! Well, it's only a chapter, obviously. I'll get the next chapter up as soon as humanly possible, I swear to God. No more uncalled for hiatuses. EXILE IS BACK, BABY.

Thank you so much for reading. If you want, leave a good review and I'll return the favor. -Exile.


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